Preservation of absolutely continuous spectrum of periodic Jacobi operators under perturbations of square-summable variation (Q663326)

The main focus of the paper under review is on the spectral properties of the self-adjoint bounded Jacobi operators on \(\ell^2(\mathbb{N})\) \[ ({\mathbf J}f)(n)=a_nf(n+1)+b_nf(n)+a_{n-1}f(n-1). \] It is assumed that there is \(q\in\mathbb{N}\) such that the coefficients \({\mathbf a}=\{a_n\}\) and \({\mathbf b}=\{b_n\}\) converge to \(q\)-periodic sequences \({\mathbf a}^{per}=\{a_n^{per}\}\) and \({\mathbf b}^{per}=\{b_n^{per}\}\) (i.e., \(a_k^{per}=\lim_{n\to\infty} a_{k+qn}\) and \(b_k^{per}=\lim_{n\to\infty} b_{k+qn}\)) and, moreover, \({\mathbf a}\) and \({\mathbf b}\) are of square summable \(q\)-variation: \[ \sum_{n=1}^\infty |a_{n+q}-a_n|^2 + |b_{n+q}-b_n|^2<\infty. \] The central result is the following extension of a recent result of \textit{S. A. Denisov} [``On a conjecture by Y.\,Last'', J. Approx. Theory 158, No. 2, 194--213 (2009; Zbl 1167.47027)]. {Theorem.} Under the above assumptions on \({\mathbf a}\) and \({\mathbf b}\), \[ \sigma_{ac}({\mathbf J})=\sigma_{ac}({\mathbf J}^{per}), \] where \({\mathbf J}^{per}\) is the periodic Jacobi operator defined by \({\mathbf a}^{per}\) and \({\mathbf b}^{per}\).